French Far-right Seeks To Win Respect With Election Pact

June 10, 1988|By Julian Nundy, Special to The Tribune.

PARIS — France`s far-right National Front and the center-right conservative parties have agreed not to field candidates against each other in the Mediterranean port of Marseille for the second round of parliamentary elections Sunday.

The unexpected agreement, in theory, clears the way for the Right to beat Socialist candidates in several electoral districts in the city.

But that is far from sure.

The deal, reached Tuesday, follows a presidential election last month in which the conservative candidate, Jacques Chirac, lost to the Socialist incumbent, Francois Mitterrand, by 8 percent. Many centrist voters apparently deserted Chirac out of fear that he might strike such a deal with the National Front. This being the case, the Marseille pact could cause a heavy swing to the Socialists in the final round of parliamentary voting.

After an elimination round in elections for the 577-seat National Assembly last Sunday, the National Front hinted that it might keep its candidates in the field for the second round in districts where the conservatives refused to enter an alliance. Such a tactic would have ensured the victory of Socialist and Communist candidates. The common practice is for only the two top candidates to run in the second round.

In last Sunday`s voting, a recently negotiated alliance of the two conservative parties came out unexpectedly ahead of the Socialists nationally with 40.7 percent of the vote against 37.5 percent. However, the Socialists are better placed to win overall because they can count on 11 percent of the Communist votes.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front leader, engineered the accord in Marseille on Tuesday to avoid a total defeat for his party. The National Front took 9.35 percent of the vote last Sunday, 5 percent less than its national turnout in the presidential elections six weeks ago, and stands to lose all except 2 of its 32 parliamentary seats after a new electoral law abolished the proportional representation system that brought the Front into parliament in 1986.

Le Pen announced he was withdrawing his candidates in the Marseille region, where he took 28 percent of the vote in the presidential elections, wherever conservatives were better placed to defeat the Socialists. Le Pen himself is in a difficult position in a Marseille district, trailing behind a Socialist.

``We want a union of the Right, and this is the proof,`` Le Pen said.

``The least we expect is reciprocal treatment.``

Reciprocity came later in the day when Maurice Toga, the Gaullist party secretary for the Marseille area, announced that conservatives would step out of the race in districts where the National Front stood a chance of winning. The decision was seen as a major victory in Le Pen`s search for political respectability.

The main conservative politician in the city, Jean-Claude Gaudin, a centrist, later confirmed the accord. He and other conservatives tried to defuse criticism by insisting that it was a local and not a national agreement.

However, French political commentators pointed out that Gaudin had flown to Paris briefly Monday to confer with his political colleagues, indicating that he had received the go-ahead from the national leadership.

The move set off a predictable storm of criticism from the Left.

Former Premier Pierre Mauroy, the Socialist Party first secretary, described it as wicked. His predecessor as party leader, Education Minister Lionel Jospin, denounced it as ``a shameful form of alliance.``

The Socialists had been seeking just such a cause to mobilize many of the record 34 percent of voters who abstained from voting last Sunday.